We’re crossing a new threshold. Individuals can make real hardware products and bring them to market.

Thanks to open and accessible hardware platforms like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and even ARM processors, Frankenstein prototypes can be hacked together in short time on short budgets. What used to take more than 60 engineering months can now take less than two.

What crowdfunding does is enable product-market-fit experimentation in a category that has historically been deprived of it. Two engineers in a dorm room who build a prototype on a low-cost development platform can quickly see if anyone wants what they’ve built by setting up a crowdfunding campaign. If the campaign goes well, not only does the team have verification that there is a market for their product, they also have capital to fund manufacturing; if it doesn’t, they just spared themselves the pain of spending time and money on a project that may not be met with success